Becoming Edward Cullens
by Orii15
Summary: Talon, unpopular and desperate for attention, endeavors to turn himself into the handsome but fictional vampire, Edward Cullen, because he seems to get on much better with the ladies than he does. But what happens when Edward turns out not to be fictional
1. Prologue: Rhythms of Death

Becoming Edward Cullen

**Becoming Edward Cullen**

A Parody by Orii15

_Prologue_

I was too tired to run any more. Each ragged breath I drew felt like my lungs were on fire. The pounding of my footsteps, the pounding of my heart, these deadly rhythms of my last moments filled my thoughts. Behind me I could hear the others slowing down, just like I was. I felt like my feet were made of lead. It was about then that I realized it didn't matter how far we ran, no matter how fast we went, we couldn't escape the inevitability of our fate. My legs gave way underneath me and I crumpled to the ground, I felt the rest of the group collapse around me. Behind us the hunters approached, scarlet eyes ablaze with hunger, and fury.

All our careful plans had been for nothing. We'd been dabbling with forces too big for us from the beginning. We'd gotten in too far; meddled with things we didn't understand. And now we were dying for it. I was glad I was out of breath, because every movie I'd ever seen where people were put into a situation similar to ours dictated that had I been able to speak, my last words should have been some sappy speech. But then, in the movies when people are put into situations like ours, they usually can talk themselves out of it or something. In the movies, our situation would have been some thrilling climax, for us it was nothing but the end.

We had no hope left. I racked my brain for some way out, some innovative escape, but there was nothing. There would be no last second rescue for us. No Deus ex Machina would save our sorry selves, for what god would want anything to do with us? There was nothing left for us now, but to wait for Death and hope it would be quick.

Someone reached out and grasped my hand with trembling fingers, every bit as frightened as I was. They squeezed my sweaty palm, and I squeezed back just as hard. There was no sound but for footsteps, gasping breaths, and pounding heartbeats, and I could see nothing but the terrible consuming red of the eyes that surrounded us.

I closed my eyes, unable to look Death in the face. "I'm sorry," I breathed. "Sorry, sorry sorry," came the rasping mantra of my voice. "I'm so, so sorry."


	2. Chapter One: Fangs of Deathiny

Chapter One

_Chapter One_

_My Kinda Guy_

It was probably the first time in human history that our lunch table had ever been this quiet. I think the worst part was I'd tolerated it for a terribly long time, waiting for someone to look up and start a conversation. But after fifteen minutes my lunch was gone and it became apparent that if anything was going remotely interesting was going to happen, I was going to have to make it happen. I glanced briefly around the table at my friends, gauging what I had to work with.

Jon was bent over a notebook, hurriedly scribbling down something that looked suspiciously like the English assignment due sixth hour. He raised a hand, and pushed his square framed glasses back up the bridge of his nose into what was supposedly their proper place, though they were forever slipping down. He already had about ten pages written in his scrawling, loopy cursive, and from the disheveled look of his sandy hair, and the dark circles under his eyes, he'd been up all night and still hadn't finished. He wasn't going to be any fun at all today. I moved on.

Maya was asleep; the red-orange streaks in her dark hair were like fire as it spilled over the table around her. She might have been up all night with that paper as well, though that would have been out of character for Maya, since she was usually the one the rest of us copied our answers off of. It was sort of an in-joke for our table that she should be the responsible one, because Maya was Asian, but she said that didn't have anything to do with the fact that she actually cared about grades.

Next to Maya, Charlotte and Siobhan, who were usually good for an interesting conversation, had their noses buried in a pair of thick, twin novels. I couldn't believe this. Charlotte was Jon's twin sister, though they were fraternal they shared the same lean frame and curly blonde hair, but Charlotte wore contacts instead of glasses like her brother. On any normal day she was the crazy one, all smiles and bursts of random songs she'd heard on the Internet, but today she apparently had higher priorities on her mind than my entertainment. I tried to remember if that thick black book had been assigned reading in one of our classes.

It was Siobhan's silence that annoyed me the most. She and I shared a grudging friendship, though on my part, I only wound her up because I liked how she looked when she was angry. Siobhan had red-brown hair; I guess you'd call it auburn, and hazel kind of eyes. I liked her; because she was pretty and good at arguing, but I had this feeling of late that she just hated me because she hated me, and not because she secretly liked me. I found that frustrating, because, really, what's not to like?

"It's so quiet," I mused, picking at my abandoned lunch. "Has the world gone mad?"

"Shut up, Talon," said Jon. He didn't glance up from his unfinished paper.

"I'm serious," I said. "Am I missing something? Why is no one talking today?"

I was greeted with a stony silence. Frustrated with my friends, I scooped up my tray and dumped it noisily into a trash bin. Maya stirred briefly at the noise, but didn't awaken fully. Charlotte gave an annoyed twitch and pointedly ignored me as I sat back down.

"What's going on here?" I said. "I don't get why you're all so quiet all of a sudden."

This time Siobhan looked up. "It's called reading, Talon," she said. "You ought to try it sometime. It's really great. In books there are no annoying guys pondering the degree of the planet's sanity every five seconds."

"It's a serious concern," I said, satisfied with myself for provoking a reaction from someone. "Spontaneous Global Madness is a very important issue in our times. What's so great about your stupid book anyways? It's boring me."

I leaned over the table and glanced at the cover. "Eclipse." I said, grinning as Siobhan snatched the book away from me and wiped the spot where I'd touched it with a wad of napkins. "And Charlotte is reading the same thing, too. Are you two studying to be astronomers?"

Siobhan threw a french fry at my head. "It's a novel," she said. "And for your information, it has nothing to do with astronomy. It's a romance."

"That's boring." I said, stealing Siobhan's napkins to wipe the ketchup out of my hair.

"Only because you're about as romantic as a mushroom." She said.

I grinned. "I like mushrooms. They're tasty."

"Whatever," she scoffed. "Tasty or not, you can't hold a candle to Edward Cullen, so be quiet."

"Edward who? That the new boy from Fitch's class? With the bad haircut?"

She and Charlotte laughed. "No. I _wish_ Edward went to our school."

"Why?" I said. "Who is he?"

"I can't believe I'm explaining this to you," said Siobhan. She sounded like I'd just asked what grass was or something. "Edward Cullen is this really amazing vampire."

"So, he's fictional." I said.

"Yes." She was getting more irritated with every word that came out of my mouth.

"Than I can definitely hold a candle to him," I said. "His book would catch on fire and he and his awesome vampire-ness would be at my mercy."

"You're stupid," said Siobhan. "And if you so much as look at my book with arson on your mind, I will chop you into little bits and donate you to the cafeteria staff to be served up in future lunches."

"You are a cruel, cruel, girl, Siobhan Wallace," I said.

"And you are the stupidest person I've ever met," she said.

"Would you like me better if I was a fictional vampire?"

"If you were Edward Cullen? I would date you in a second."

"Seriously?"

"Yes, but don't get any ideas, Talon. That's never going to happen."

"We'll see about that." I said, half-jokingly. "What makes Edward Cullen so attractive to you?"

"Well," she said. "Not only is he exceedingly handsome, he's also very caring and considerate, and loving. He's very unselfish and very smart. And he's a vampire." She added the last bit sort of as an after-thought to the list of the Virtues of Edward Cullen.

"So basically," said Charlotte, who'd given up on reading to gang up on me with Siobhan. "He's everything you're not."

I scoffed. "I am very handsome, caring and unselfish, thank you very much." I said. "If you want to spend your whole life waiting up for some undead fictional wonder-guy, be my guest, but I'm not going to offer you my shoulder to cry on when you finally figure out he doesn't exist."

I think Siobhan was about to cuss me out when the bell rang. As I was leaving I heard Charlotte say, "Jerk." And she and the others laughed.

I mused that I really ought to consider finding new friends who didn't tell me to shut up every five seconds or throw stuff at my head.

Siobhan had been pretty mad at me at lunch. And that was bad. But she'd also, probably unknowingly, told me exactly how to remedy all that. A plan was already forming in my mind as I left the school that afternoon. It was pretty much brilliant, but then, my plans usually are. I think it has something to do with the fact that I am a genius. All I was going to need were some plastic fangs from the dollar store and the full stores of my charm, and ingenuity. Already I had a good feeling about this plan, I knew this was going to be brilliant.

Siobhan had said. "If you were Edward Cullen, I would date you in a second."

I was going to take her up on that. In this crazy, mixed up world, with so much changing every day, who was to say I _wasn't_ Edward Cullen? I mean, not physically, I knew I wasn't really a fictional vampire, but I had a feeling that Mr. Cullen and I were, perhaps, connected on some deeper spiritual level. And with Siobhan so love struck she'd skip lunch just to spend a half hour more reading about her fanged lover boy, how could she to say 'no' to Talon-with-Vampire-Fangs? (Not quite as good as really having fangs, but even with my amazing skillz, growing them over night was out of the question. I just hoped that they wouldn't fall out while I was talking or eating, or if Siobhan kissed me.) I thought I was a very realistic option as opposed to forever dreaming of the unreal undead.

The clerk at the Dollar General looked at me funny when I checked out. The Vampire Fangs only came in sets of six, but I figured I could always use a couple of extras. They were this sort of translucent neon green color because they were supposed to glow in the dark, but I didn't mind that either, really. Stuff that is already cool all by itself becomes about ten million times cooler when it glows in the dark. I don't know why; it just does. It must be like this unwritten law of nature or something.

Anyways, it was early April, and here I was buying glow in the dark Halloween novelties. It was hard to ignore the questioning look of the girl behind the counter as she asked me if I would like my teeth in a bag. I told her that wouldn't be necessary, and smiled. I thought I was rather charming and debonair, smiling like that and telling her I didn't want my plastic fangs in a bag. She might have thought so, too, but for some reason she got this pained expression and didn't look me in the eye when she gave me my change—one penny. I decided that maybe the clerk at the Dollar General wasn't the best judge of who was an attractive fictional vampire and who wasn't, because she looked like she thought I might have been an escaped mental patient or something. I picked up my glowing fangs and left the store. I didn't look back.

I tried them on as soon as I got home. I put on a pair and went to look in the mirror. They sort of stuck out from underneath my lips, like I had buckteeth or something, except they were buckfangs. I did a charming smile at my reflection. It was a bit awkward around the fangs, but not too bad. The bathroom light was a bit dim and I could see my mouth faintly glowing greenish from the fangs. This inhibited my charm only slightly. I thought I looked quite handsome in spite of it all. I decided to try a few lines of what I would say to Siobhan the next day when I saw her.

"Siobhan," I said to my dashing reflection, "It is I, Edward the Fictional Vampire from your book."

The teeth did impair my speech. They fit weirdly into my mouth and so when I spoke I had this little annoying lisp. It sounded like I'd said, "Thiobhan, I am Edward the Ficthional Vampire throm your book."

I grimaced and tried to speak around teeth, but it was no good. "Tharming and debonair," was not exactly the impression I'd been going for.

The problem was I'd already gone a bought the fangs, I'd already used a pair, I felt this great internal urge like I had gone too far now to turn back. I was going to become Edward Cullen for Siobhan, even if it killed me. Even if I had to lisp for all of eternity, I could not step away now from my brilliant and beautiful plan. Perhaps it was pride, perhaps it was some ingredient in the plastic fangs I hadn't known about messing with my head, but I knew I had no choice but to go on from here.

The next day I had planned to get up early and meet Siobhan at school before classes started, but I'd been up really late trying to learn how to talk without lisping so badly when I wore the fangs. I hadn't made much progress, but I had somehow ended up falling asleep with them still in my mouth, and when I woke up I was late and I had drool all over my face. I skipped breakfast on the principle that it would take too much time to figure out how I was supposed to eat a muffin with those things in my mouth.

I got to school just in time to be counted tardy for first period.

"Thorry, I'm late, thir," I said, meeting Mr. Griel's disapproving glare. "I overthlept."

"Mr. Leopold," said Mr. Griel, "I don't know if this is some misguided bid for attention, or if you think it's funny for some reason to come to class late, but I just want you to know that I do not accept this kind of foolishness in my class. If you are tardy again, I am going to have no choice but to give you detention."

"Yes, thir. Thorry about that, thir."

"That's enough, Mr. Leopold. Just thit—Now you've got me doing it!—just _sit_ down. Now."

"Thitting, thir."

He gave me another disapproving look and the class laughed. I think it was the first time any students had ever dared express their amusement aloud in first period pre-calculus. The room rang with the unfamiliar, merry sound of it. I smirked around the fangs as best I could. My plan was already working. Sort of. Not like how I'd thought it would, but somehow it was doing something worthwhile anyways. I decided that God must have wanted this for me. We were destined for each other from before the dawn of time, these plastic fangs and I. They had glowed for me in the darkness, before the world was formed, and now, when Mr. Griel turned out the lights to show us something on the overhead, they glowed for me once again.

I didn't see Siobhan until lunch again that day, when I spotted her in the hallway, walking with Jon. They were laughing at something together, and standing too close to one another. I ran to catch up with them, their laughter ringing in the pit of my stomach like an empty panic.

"Thiobhan!" I said. "Wait, up. I need to talk with you."

She stopped abruptly, and whirled to face me. Her red hair spun with her and then fell back gracefully to frame her face. She still looked angry for some reason. I hoped it was something Jon had done.

"Did you just—" She broke off as she noticed the fangs. I expected a smile at least, but her eyes darkened and she was scowling as she said, "For the love of Pete, Talon. I heard people saying you were wearing those stupid fangs and lisping like an idiot, but I thought they were exaggerating."


End file.
